Those just getting in the industry and those representing organizations that give back to our community sometimes need a little help to fit it into their budgets.

I have set aside 50 tickets out of our 300 tickets for these two groups. The first 50 to sign up with our below promotion widget and help us get the word out by liking and tweeting the Social Fresh Charlotte conference, will be able to attend for a reduced rate.

Not only will they get to attend at a reduced rate, but they get to attend at the lowest rate we have ever offered the event at, $75. Tickets for Social Fresh START at $197. And they go up to over $400 as the event day draws closer. When the price goes up, these tickets will stay at $75 until all 50 are gone.

This amounts to between a 60% and 85% discount depending on when you purchase.

The below form will give you a prompt to like Social Fresh Charlotte on Facebook, share it on Twitter and then collect your name and email so we can get back in touch with more details on how to sign up.

Big thanks to David Wells of the Inbound Now video interview series and the folks at HubSpot for creating the above app.

Amber will be speaking about Zombies, specifically “Zombie Fighting, Handling the Social Media Questions That Just Won’t Die.” She will cover realistic answers to some of the biggest recurring questions surrounding social media implementation and adoption.

We also have several more speakers to add to the Social Fresh St. Louis roster:

• Amber Naslund – Radian6
• Jenna Petroff – Hardee’s
• Jason Falls – Social Media Explorer
• Jay Baer – Convince and Convert
• Kelly Doria – Scottrade
• Greg Cangialosi – Blue Sky Factory
• Mark Roberge – Hubspot
• Reem Abeidoh – GroupM Search
• Amber Talbot – Scottrade
• Stephen Linn – CMT / MTV Networks
• Stephen Bolen – Sigma-Aldrich
• Josh Kocurek – Millennium Hotels & Resorts
• Matt Browne – Lending Tree
• Zena Weist – H&R Block
• Jason Gertzen – Sprint
• Joshua Kahn – Best Buy
• Danielle Smith – ExtraordinaryMommy.com
• Steve Parker – Levelwing
• Gia Lyons – Jive Software
• Chris Penn – Blue Sky Factory
• Heidi Sullivan – Cision
• Mica Veihman – Monsanto Company

At our next social media conference, Social Fresh Tampa, we will be giving away one Gold level sponsorship ($2,750 value) to one Florida non-profit (501c3). But, we need your help to pick the winning charity.

This is much more than just a scholarship to attend. The winning charity will receive:

• 3 free tickets to two days of social media training and education
• Free branding and exhibitor table at the event to promote awareness of their cause
• An amazing networking opportunity for connecting with local and national communication leaders

How To Nominate

We need you to nominate the charity you think will #1 have the most to gain from this opportunity and #2 is most deserving. To nominate a charity, simply comment on this blog post with the Charity name, website, and Florida city it is located in.

1. Every charity that receives at least 2 comments will be nominated
2. Only one vote per commenter/comment
3. Nominations and comments close at noon midnight on Friday, January 28th

Selection Process

We have selected 3 local judges to help us pick a worthy winner. They will be judging based on two criteria, 1) Which organizations have the most to gain from the experience and 2) Which organizations are deserving by being active and eager in digital marketing and social media.

Our judges will be Ted Murphy, CEO of Orlando based IZEA, Elissa Nauful, CEO of Tampa based Ballywho Interactive, and Amber Osborne, of Tampa based Head Of Lettuce Media.

Eligibility

All eligible charities/non-profits must be 501(c)3 and can be national or international as long as they have a Florida office. Final discretion of eligibility is subjective and up to Social Fresh LLC to decide privately. The goal is to make the contest as open as possible and to benefit a local organization. We will stay true to that focus.

Big thanks to our Social Fresh St. Louis B2B Panelists, Chris Penn of Blue Sky Factory Email Marketing, Jay Baer of ConvinceandConvert.com, Stephen Bolen of Sigma-Aldrich, and Gia Lyons of Jive Software. And thank you to Stephen for capturing some quick video of the session for us to put up on the site.

Full video of our keynote panel with John Andrews of Collective Bias (formerly of Walmart) , Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer, Amber Naslund of Radian6, Bert Dumars of Newell Rubbermaid, and Paul Berg of Linhart PR (formerly of Southwest Airlines).

Social Fresh Nashville had over 275 attendees and was a huge success. Stay tuned for more video coverage of the event to be posted soon.

Thanks to everyone who came out and made Social Fresh Tampa such a successful event.

We really enjoyed the new audience round table discussions, the number of major brands that attended from the great Florida regin, and the great energy the event had as a whole – from the orange lights to the chocolate chip cookie afternoon break.

We have so much content to post over the coming weeks from the event. Stay tuned.

Social Fresh Tampa 2/8/2010, with…

Maggie Fox of SocialMediaGroup.com, Greg Cangialosi of BlueSkyFactory.com, Amber Naslund of Radian6.com, Tom Hoof of RaysBaseball.com, Chris Barger of GMblogs.com, Jason Keath of SocialFresh.com, Stephen Linn of CMT.com, Jeremy Hilton of Mindcomet.com, Chris Moody of Bandwidth.com, Cassandra Jeyaram of Intercontinental Hotels Group, John Bernier of Bestbuy.com, Rich Ullman of Ripple6.com and Griffin Farley of 22squared.com

Thanks to Cornflowermusic.com for the badass song, “Oceanwater”

Other standouts include three trendsetting companies: Crispin Porter, Mindcomet, and IZEA. These companies have all influenced the national social media landscape.

Two vendor side companies doing some important work under the radar are Ingage Networks (formerly Neighborhood America) who has been building major social solutions for many major businesses and government agencies, and Voce Communications who has built some of the better brand blog solutions.

Overall, the state of social media in the sunshine state is strong. These agencies, brands, and vendors stand out, not just in Florida, but on the national stage as top creatives and innovators in the social media industry.

Disney (Orlando, FL) has invested in several blogs and communities for all if their different audiences, moms, dads, families, and fans. They had a recent viral hit by allowing you to produce a video for friends, renaming a Disney park in their honor, as part of their What Will You Celebrate Campaign. Disney has a family community, Mom’s panel, and Dad’s community. Disney also operates various blogs for their different audiences.

Crispin Porter (Miami, FL) is well known for their industry leading creative work, plenty of which is extending into social media. From their Coke Zero Facial Profiler Facebook App, to their work with American Express’s small business social network Open Forum to the controversial use of Crowdspring for the new Brammo Logo. They also have embraced transparency and social with their recently updated homepage.

Burger King (Miami, FL) has always been willing to take chances and experiment with their marketing. From their early viral hit in 2003, The Subservient Chicken, to creating their own Xbox games in 2006 to more recently questioning our concept of Facbeook Friends with their Whopper Sacrifice campaign.

Ingage Networks (Naples, FL), formerly Neighborhood America, is a social enterprise software powerhouse. They have been building large brand and government solutions for years. They have helped CBS News do crowdsourcing with their massive audience. They built uReport, the user generated news community for Fox News. KFC and other Yum! brands use their software to leverage mobile marketing. And Kodak uses their software to support their Idea Center Community.

IZEA (Orlando, FL) is leading the discussion and debate over sponsored online content. Evolving from the original PayPerPost, they have created the IZEA community where bloggers connect with each other and advertisers is a very open and transparent partnership. They have also taken this model to Twitter with SponsoredTweets. They are empowering bloggers and social media users of all types to become media outlets.

Voce Communications (Tampa, FL) is an award-winning marketing and communications consultancy with an important piece of it’s operations located in the heart of Florida. Some of their most notable work includes very well done blogs for big brands including eBay Ink, the official eBay blog, and the official Playstation Blog, one of the most active brand blogs on the web.

Mindcomet (Orlando, FL) has been experimenting with blogging and viral marketing for a while, one of their early projects, Blogs in space, took a $1,000 budget and created a big viral movement online and tons of offline press around bloggers signing up to have their content beamed into space. They have utilized niche blogging very well for marketing their own company. And they have helped develop strong social media projects for Sea World, worked to develop advanced iPhone games and even crowdsourced their own pro-bono work through CommuniCause.

22squared (Tampa, FL) works with restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wing to grow a great Facebook audience as well as create an interactive media experience using mashed up video and enabling it to be shared easily. Another project of note is their work with CBS Sports Fantasy Football and an extended smack talk community called The Locker Room.

PUSH (Orlando, FL) has taken on the restaurant chain problem of needing a national and local presence and established hubs that included a new, interactive Web site and content management system, mobile site, iPhone application, corporate MySpace and Facebook pages to compliment 68 individual restaurant Facebook and MySpace pages. They are also working closely with other restaurants like Tijuana Flats and the Melting Pot to extend their branding through social media and extend their community with Facebook applications.

Outback Steakhouse (Tampa, FL) uses Facebook as the homebase for their social efforts. Their free bloomin’ onion campaign saw their Facebook Fan numbers soar over 500k recently. They are also experimenting with multiple Twitter efforts, social coupon sharing, and have created their own version of online fantasy football.

Social Fresh Nashville was a big success on January 11.

What did you miss at the event?

Well, here is a brief glimpse of some of the good fun and good insight from Jason Falls of SocialMediaExplorer.com, Greg Cangialosi of BlueSkyFactory.com, amber Naslund of Radian6.com, Bert Dumars of Newell Rubbermaid, and Paula Berg of LinhartPR.com.

Just a few of the 30+ great speakers we hosted in the music city.

Thanks to Hoots and Hellmouth for the great song, “Rattle These Bones”

Get $100 off. 11 tickets left. Register NOW.

An insiders look at some of the speakers and sessions topics that will be covered at Social Fresh Tampa on Feb 8th.

Another recent addition to the content will include a “Social Media in the Restaurant Industry” panel. Many national chain restaurants are headquartered in the Tampa/Orlando area, so it is very opportune to feature the restaurant industry, especially as many of them invest in more comprehensive social media strategies. Check out the full schedule here.

We added 9 new speakers today (in bold below) to an almost full list of 30+ Social Fresh Tampa speakers

• Chris Barger of GM
• Maggie Fox of Social Media Group
• John Bernier of Best Buy – Twelpforce
• John Andrews of Collective Bias
• Spike Jones of Brains on Fire
• Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory
• David Martin of Mindcomet
• Tessa Horehled of THINK Interactive
• Brian Simpson of Roger Smith Hotel
• Jeremy Hilton of Mindcomet
• Jason Breed of Neighborhood America
• Steve Hall of AdRants
• DJ Waldow of Blue Sky Factory
• Amber Naslund of Radian6
• Marc Meyer of Digital Response
• Cassandra Jeyaram of Intercontinental Hotels Group
• Pete Scott of IZEA
• Alex de Carvalho of StartPR.com
• Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions
• Brian Dresher of USAtoday
• Elissa Plumley of Ballywho Interactive
• Lori Gustafson of Darden
  
• Tom Hoof of Tampa Bay Rays
• Jim Long of NBC
• Josh Hallett of Voce Communications
• Heidi Sullivan of Cision
• Stephen Linn of Country Music Television
• Griffin Farley of 22squared

Get $100 off. 11 tickets left. Register NOW.